The Unexpected Effects of No Pass, No Drive Policies on High School Education

Kennedy, Kendall (2018): The Unexpected Effects of No Pass, No Drive Policies on High School Education.

Abstract

Since 1988, 27 states have introduced No Pass, No Drive laws, which tie a teenager’s ability to receive and maintain a driver’s license to various school-related outcomes -- most commonly, enrollment and attendance. Truancy-Based No Pass, No Drive policies target only attendance – teens that fail to meet a minimum attendance requirement lose their driver’s license. However, these policies allow students to drop out of school without facing this penalty. These policies increase the annual dropout rate by between 32 and 45 percent (1.4 to 2 percentage points). Enrollment-Based No Pass, No Drive policies, the largest group of policies, which target both enrollment and attendance, have negligible effects on dropout rates, but decrease the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR) by more than one percentage point. However, this lower graduation rate stems from students delaying their dropout decision by up to two years. As a result, these students are retained in the ninth and tenth grades, increasing ninth grade enrollment by 2.8 percent relative to eighth grade enrollment the year prior; this causes an artificial reduction in the graduation rate, rather than a reduction in the true likelihood that a student will graduate.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: AFGR, Dropout Rate, Driver's License, Education, No Pass No Drive
• Subjects: H - Public Economics > H7 - State and Local Government ; Intergovernmental Relations > H75 - State and Local Government: Health ; Education ; Welfare ; Public Pensions; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I28 - Government Policy

References

Anderson, D. M. (2014). In school and out of trouble? the minimum dropout age and juvenile crime. Review of Economics and Statistics, 96(2):318-331.

Angrist, J., Bettinger, E., Bloom, E., King, E., and Kremer, M. (2002). Vouchers for private schooling in colombia: Evidence from a randomized natural experiment. American Economic Review, 92(5):1535-1558.

Ayres, B. D. (1989). West virginia reduces dropouts by denying them driver's license. The New York Times, 21st May.

Barua, R. and Vidal-Fernandez, M. (2014). No pass no drive: Education and allocation of time. Journal of Human Capital, 8(4):399-431.

Barua, R. and Vidal-Fernandez, M. (2016). Wheeling into school and out of crime: Evidence from linking driving licenses to minimum academic requirements.

Behrman, J. R., Sengupta, P., and Todd, P. (2005). Progressing through progresa: An impact assessment of a school subsidy experiment in rural mexico. Economic development and cultural change, 54(1):237-275.

Bertrand, M., Duo, E., and Mullainathan, S. (2004). How much should we trust differences-in-differences estimates? The Quarterly journal of economics, 119(1):249-275.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (1986-2013). Local area unemployment statistics. United States De- partment of Labor.

Cameron, A. C., Gelbach, J. B., and Miller, D. L. (2008). Bootstrap-based improvements for inference with clustered errors. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 90(3):414-427.

Cameron, S. and Heckman, J. (1993). The Nonequivalence of High School Equivalents. Journal of labor economics, 11(1, Part 1):1-47.

Carrell, S. E. and Hoekstra, M. L. (2010). Externalities in the classroom: How children exposed to domestic violence affect everyone's kids. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2(1):211-228.

Common Core of Data (2017). U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics.

Dee, T. S. (2011). Conditional cash penalties in education: Evidence from the learnfare experiment. Economics of Education Review, 30(5):924-937.

D.F. v. Codell (KY 2003). 127 S.W.3d 571.

Elementary/Secondary Information System (2017). U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics.

Greene, J. P. and Winters, M. A. (2002). Public school graduation rates in the United States. Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute.

Haney, W., Madaus, G., Abrams, L., Wheelock, A., Miao, J., Gruia, I., and Gruia, I. (2004). The Education Pipeline in the United States, 1970-2000.

Hanushek, E. A., Machin, S. J., and Woessmann, L. (2016). Handbook of the Economics of Education. Elsevier.

Heckman, J. J., Humphries, J. E., and Mader, N. S. (2011). The ged. In Handbook of the Economics of Education, volume 3, pages 423-483. Elsevier.

Historical Tables & Reports: Elementary and Secondary Enrollment (2017). U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics.

Kansas Statute Annotated (2018). 72-89c02(a)-(c).

Krimmel, J. T. (2000). An examination of kentucky's" no pass{no drive bill". Educational Research Quarterly, 23(4):27.

Lenard, M. (2011). Strengthening attend `n' drive laws to reduce truancy and dropouts. SREB Policy brief.

Lochner, L. and Moretti, E. (2004). The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports. The American Economic Review, 94(1):155-189.

McCallumore, K. M. and Sparapani, E. F. (2010). The importance of the ninth grade on high school graduation rates and student success in high school. Education, 130(3):447-456.

No Child Left Behind Act. (2002). Washington, DC: US Department of Education.

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm (2009). Driving through the eyes of teens, a closer look. The Young Driver Research Initiative Team.

U.S. Census Bureau. Population estimates: Intercensal estimates 1990-2000, 2000-2010. Wash- ington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Project.

U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. Highway statistics 2009. Washington, DC: Federal Highway Administration.

West Virginia Annotated Code (2018). 17B-2-3a(2)(E).